Environments that Promote Recovery

Environments that Promote Recovery
June 2002

Principal Investigators: Ed Knight, Ph.D., Mary Jane Alexander, Ph.D., Kim Hopper, Ph.D.

PROJECT GOALS

Anecdotally, uniform training in the Boston Universtiy (BU) Psychiatric Rehabilitation Model has been variably successful across four settings that participate in a Medicaid managed care carve out plan for persons with severe mental illness in rural Colorado. This study will characterize the sites’ success in implementing the BU model (measured qualitatively by quasi-ethnographic observation and quantitatively by clinicians’ self ratings of competency across the BU Rehabilitation Model domains). We will examine the relationship between site factors and quantitative indices of:

1) consumers’ ability to cope with mental health symptoms and substance abuse problems;
2) their levels of functioning (self and clinician rated);
3) their development of social networks and social roles beyond the mental health system (work, school, volunteer activities);
4) their ability to effectively manage psychiatric symptoms and 5)their use of traditional and non-traditional services.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS

Qualitative and quantitative data collection (N=130 consumers at three sites) has just been completed. The project used tools to measure successful coping with psychiatric symptoms, consumer confidence, and clinician competencies, which were developed by Dr. Knight in conjunction with the Rutgers NIMH Center for Research on the Organization and Financing of Care for the Severely Mentally Ill, the NY Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health and the RAND Center.

SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS/ POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Relationships with primary clinicians in service settings are a focal point for consumers as they move toward recovery’s goals: achieving a meaningful life through valued social roles and reducing psychiatric symptoms. The results of this study will provide correlation data about the relationships between local contextual factors, clinician competencies in the techniques of psychiatric rehabilitation, and consumers’ attainment of the basic goals of recovery for PSMD.

PLANS

Data will be analyzed in the next six months. Cost data and qualitative descriptors of the remaining two settings may be added, depending on results of the field observational study.

Entered: June 17, 2002

Presentations and Papers:

Alexander MJ, Knight E, Robins C, Bush B, Onken S and Hopper K (discussant). Factors that promote recovery: A holistic approach to service systems change. 13^thAnnual Conference on State Mental Health Agency Services Research, Program Evaluation and Policy, sponsored by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, Baltimore MD, Feb. 11, 2003

Knight E. Recovery. Presented at above conference, available on-line.